Unprecedented Proposals On Tech Made By China On Trade As Talks Progress: Reuters

03/28/2019

A Reuters report published Thursday claimed that incredible proposals on trade have been made by China to the United States over a wide range of points including the sticky issue forced technology transfer in the effort between the two sides to come to an agreement on trade and end the ongoing trade war between the countries that has been going on since the middle of last year.

The trade war has seen the United State imposing import tariffs on Chinese goods worth billions of dollars with tit-for-tat tariffs imposed on US goods by China. The aim of the trade tariffs imposed by the administration of US President Donald Trump was to make China bring in major changes in the way it does trade with other countries as well as to force Beijing to open up its economy and market for US companies.

Trump had alleged that China engage sin systematic theft of intellectual properties of US companies and forces US companies to mandatorily share technology with their Chinese partners in the name of joint ventures to do business in China.

The Reuters report, based on information provided U.S. administration officials, claimed that the unprecedented proposals from China were placed before the US trade representatives during the negotiations that went past their scheduled deadline in the past and included proposals on e sticky issue of technology transfer also.

The US official also reportedly told Reuters that progress has been made on the details of the written agreements that the negotiators are trying to finalise to address all of the concerns of the US.

“If you looked at the texts a month ago compared to today, we have moved forward in all areas. We aren’t yet where we want to be,” the official reportedly told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

“They’re talking about forced technology transfer in a way that they’ve never wanted to talk about before - both in terms of scope and specifics,” the official reportedly said , referring to Chinese negotiators.

There have been previous reports that a written agreement is being worked on by the two sides which focuses on six important aspects of trade - forced transfer of technology, cyber theft, intellectual property rights, services, currency, agriculture and non-tariff barriers to trade.

The two sides began in-person talks in Beijing on Thursday andthe Chinese delegation is headed by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The latest round of talks is expected to be followed by another round in Washington. This would be the first time that the two sides would be holding face-to-face negotiations in week now.

Reuters report quoted the US official saying that the negotiations would be carried on as long as there is progress made i=on the more sticky issues. “It could go to May, June, no one knows. It could happen in April, we don’t know,” another administration official told Reuters.

“Some tariffs will stay,” the second official said. “There’s going to be some give on that, but we’re not going to get rid of all the tariffs. We can’t.”